I was born in Liberia. My older brother and I were abandoned by our parents because there was a war going on. At least this is what my grandmother told me. I was and still am angry and sad about my parents deserting me. I feel that they should have found a guardian for my brother and me instead of leaving us alone on the corner. My grandmother told me that they tried to hide us so we wouldn't caught up in the war. But that doesn't make me feel any better about them.

I lived with my grandmother for at least 15 years in Africa. Then my father who had come to America and settle in Worcester sent for my brother and me. I lived with him and my step-mother for about two years. Then he left again just like I thought he would. I stayed with my step-mother and her two daughters. Life wasn't good with her after my father left.

At the age of seventeen and a half I moved out and went to live with friends. That's where I am now. After my grandmother passed away I didn't know who to turn to when I needed advice, so I joined the gang. At least I felt they were men enough to teach me right from wrong, I thought as time went on things changed. I thought they cared about me, but they didn't. They just wanted me to fight their battles with them. Then, one day I was chilling with my friends and there came the people we had a beef with. I didn't see them but my friends did and they ranway and I was left alone to face this people and there I was facing death with a gun at my head and knife in my thoat. Luckily, one of my friends came back to help me out. I would have been dead now. After that, I went home and said to myself, if my grandmother was alive what would she say to me? She would want me to finish high school and go to college. So I made a decision to go back to school, to get my GED, and go to college.

I want to make her proud. I will always feel thankful to my grandmother for giving me a home when I didn't have one, and for having me like a son. I pray that God is watching over her soul. Because I know she is watching over me.